


the future we hope is not yet to come

by turtle_abyss



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Stephen Strange starring as the Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come, potential Endgame fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-24 20:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20913689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtle_abyss/pseuds/turtle_abyss
Summary: Tony was right. Something is coming.





	the future we hope is not yet to come

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely unbeta'd and I didn't do more than passing edits. I just wanted to torment Steve a bit, since he's not one of my usual suspects.

Something hits him.

The world shifts around him as he hits the ground and when he gets back up, the HYDRA agents absconding with Ultron parts are gone and so is his team.

Steve spins around, taking in the figure before him, shield at the ready. The man’s features are shrouded and nearly indiscernible. "Who're you?"

He looks around. Feet dragging through snow now, instead of across hot Romanian pavement.

"And where are we?"

The man laughs wryly. "You can call me....the Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come. Or Christmas Past. It’s confusing. Definitely not Present."

He hears gunfire in the distance.

The man waves a hand. The world shifts around them and then they are in a room made mostly of stone and filled with tech. And a very familiar scepter.

"Thor, I got eyes on the prize," he hears from behind him and he spins yet again only to have Tony walk right by him.

"Tony?"

But Tony doesn't seem to hear him. 

There's a flash of red.

"Wanda?" he calls, watching the way reality warps, the way she flashes from one end of the room to right behind Tony. Her fingers contort in that eerie way they do when she's controlling her magic more precisely. She's not too experienced at it just yet, but this...she seems to know what she's doing here. That doesn't really jive with what he knows though. Her eyes flare red and magic seeps from her hands into Tony. His eyes flash red.

She smiles and it sends shivers down Steve's spine. He tries to pull her away from Tony and his hand just passes right through her. As though she's a ghost. She backs off anyway. He turns to help Tony and Tony stumbles. Walks forward, looking around like he's not really seeing the room. Flinching and gasping. And then Tony grabs the scepter.

He hears a voice and turns again to see Wanda leave with her brother.

The man growls. Twists his hand.

They're in Tony's lab. With all of them. A familiar scene, if from a different vantage point.

"A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the livelong day, but that up there? That's...that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?" Tony asks, and with a few months to breathe Steve can tell now that Tony's scared.

"Together," says past Steve. Steve wonders if he normally looks that cold and uncompromising. He'd always thought he looked determined.

"We'll lose."

"Then we'll do that together, too."

The man snorts.

"So he knew this whole time," he says wonderingly, voice tight with what sounds like grief.

"Knew what?" Steve asks, but the man twists his wrist again.

The air smells like gasoline and blood and burning flesh. Steam hisses from pipes into the freezing air.  
“Hear me, and rejoice. You have had the privilege of being saved by the Great Titan. You may think this is suffering. No. It is _ salvation.” _

Steve looks around, at the dead bodies filling nearly every space across the floor of this dark metal room, then at the tall thin alien stepping amid the corpses.

Thor is screaming.

This doesn’t look like salvation.

He watches as Loki, the god he’d thought of as one of the greatest enemies he’d ever defeated, pleads for Thor’s life and dies for it.

Another twist of the wrist.

The sky and ground are orange. The area barren but for wreckage.

But all Steve can see is that creature the size of the Hulk. The supposed _ Great Titan. _ With a sword stabbed through Tony's stomach. Walking him backwards to sit on a rock, one massive hand cradling Tony's head for just a moment.

He can't look away. Only notices the other bodies in his peripheral, but none of them are familiar.

Tony chokes up blood, eyes blank and defeated.

The creature raises its fist.

A man propping himself up against a shattered boulder calls for him to Stop. 

_ 'God please stop,' _Steve thinks desperately.

Tony begs otherwise as the man plucks a gleaming emerald from the stars in the sky.

The man looks away.

Twists.

Green foliage and oppressive heat and humidity.

There’s chanting in the distance. The crash and crack of thunder and lightning. Light splitting the air. Steve looks up, hoping to see Thor alive and well, and sees massive ships rising up in the air. A retreat. Several of the ships explode midair in great flashes of light as jets fly by, the debris crashing against a blue energy dome overhead.

Then the wind picks up. The world goes quiet. The hairs on the back of his neck rise.

“He’s here,” Vision murmurs.

And then Steve watches, helpless, as each Avenger and more band together to try to stop the titan that likely just killed Tony and are swatted away like flies one after another. His measured steps unchanged as he steps past the bodies he leaves behind.

He screams as Bucky - _ Bucky is here. Alive. He’s been searching for so long it seems and here he is. _ \- is tossed aside like nothing. Wants to throw up when War Machine crumples in on itself and Rhodey cries out. Sam knocked from the air and Natasha buried in the earth. The other him provides almost no challenge to the massive alien.

His horror only grows when he realizes that their very best is only a distraction to buy time for Wanda to tearfully kill Vision.

And even then it’s useless.

Because apparently that emerald can reverse time and resurrect the dead. Only for them to be killed again.

He tries to throw himself at the alien, knowing it’s useless, when he pets Wanda on the head like a disappointed father in the face of her grief.

They’ve lost.

God.

They really-

Tony was right-

Lightning throws the titan back and Steve’s hope swells as Thor doesn’t hesitate to hurl a massive power-splitting axe into the goliath’s chest, roaring with grief and rage. The titan cries out in agony and Steve wants to scream at Thor to just finish it before anyone else dies as Thor taunts him hatefully.

“You should have gone for the head!” he hears, before the gauntlet is raised. Thor cries out in horror as the sound of a snap rings in his ears and blinding light flashes.

When it fades, the gauntlet is scorched and mangled.

“What did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO?!” Thor yells frantically.

The titan teleports away.

The axe rings hollowly as it hits the ground.

Steve watches as Thor stumbles faintly, not seeming to hear as the other Steve asks where their enemy has gone.

“Steve?”

Bucky! Oh thank god, he’s alri-

Steve falls to his knees.

Gone.

He’s gone.

That can’t...This can’t be.

He only just got him back.

Someone in the distance cries out. Something explodes.

To his left, Wanda dissolves into dust as well.

Rhodey calls out for Sam and gets no answer.

Steve gasps for breath.

“Why?” he asks.

The man doesn’t answer.

“Why are you showing me this?” he shouts tearfully.

The man looks down at him, frowning.

“Why do you think?” he answers, and twists his wrist.

They're in a conference room.

Natasha's hair is blonde and Tony looks _ skeletal_.

“Tony, I'm gonna need you to focus,” the other Steve says sternly. Tony frowns sharply at him.

“And I _ needed _ you,” Tony says matter-of-factly, “As in past tense. That trumps what you need. It's too late, buddy. Sorry. You know what I need?” Tony stands, pushing things off the table with a clatter, and Steve winces. “I need to shave. And I _ believe _I remember telling all you,” Tony starts saying with that false, accusative lightness, stumbling towards the other Steve.

“Tony, Tony, Tony!” Rhodey calls, trying to stop him, trying to get him to sit back down.

Tony ignores him, yanking his arm out of Rhodey’s too-careful grip.

“Alive and otherwise, that what we needed was a suit of armor around the world! Remember that? Whether it impacted our precious _ freedoms _ or not- that's what we _ needed! _” Tony snarls with a fury Steve has never seen.

“Well, that didn't work out, did it?” Other Steve asks solemnly, rhetorically, arms crossed and stone-faced and Steve of the now knows that wasn’t the right move here.

“I said, "We'd lose". You said, "We'll do that together too." And guess what, Cap? We _ lost_. And you weren't _ there_.” 

Steve feels like the floor is falling out from under him. He’s never seen that kind of betrayed expression on Tony’s face. On _ anyone’s _ face, really. He can’t believe he let him down that badly. This can’t be real.

“But that's what we do, right? Our best work after the fact? We're the Avengers, we're the A-vengers. Not the Pre-vengers.”

“Okay,” Rhodey murmurs, still trying to pull Tony back.

“Right?” Tony shouts.

“You made your point. Just sit down,” Rhodey pleads.

“Okay…” Tony agrees tiredly.

“Okay?” Rhodey confirms doubtfully.

Tony starts to go with him but seems to think twice.

“Nah, nah. Here's my point. You know what?” Tony says, turning back to other Steve.

“Tony, you're sick,” Rhodey says softly.

Tony points at a blonde woman Steve doesn’t recognize. “She's great, by the way.”

“Sit down. Sit,” Rhodey tries.

“We need you. You're new blood. Bunch of tired old mules! I got nothing for you, Cap! I got no coordinates, no clues, no strategies, no options. Zero. Zip. Nada. No trust. _ Liar_.” His voice is weak and shaky and so full of rage, Steve takes a step back.

The other Steve wavers and Steve has never hated himself more than right now, because right now he feels like Tony just ripped out his heart and fed it to him.

They gaze at each other. Steve sucks in a sharp breath as Tony rips his arc reactor - his _ heart _ \- from his chest and shoves it into the other Steve's hand.

“Here, take this. You find him, and you put that on. You _ hide_.”

It’s like a punch to the gut.

Tony falls to his knees.

“Tony!” he and the other Steve shout at the same time. Everyone rushing in.

“I'm fine. I…”

Tony falls.

The man sighs deeply and Steve rounds on him.

“Why are you showing me this?” he demands.

Twist.

Natasha is falling.

Clint is sobbing.

Twist.

A battlefield under a haze of smoke. Dead silent. Those still standing looking in one direction.

There’s a scream.

So full of grief it shatters across everyone who hears it.

Steve runs.

Falls to his knees.

Tony.

“Why?” he sobs as the man walks by him to gaze down at Tony’s burnt and blistered face.

His empty eyes.

The man shakes his head.

Twist.

“Steve?” he hears. He blinks bleary eyes open to a bright blue sky amid familiar buildings. He sits up. His head hurts. “Hey, easy, you took quite the hit from that Hydra cannon. That I warned you about.”

He looks to the side and sees Natasha’s bright red hair and teasing grin. He sobs. Grief and relief fill him in equal measure as he reaches out and pulls her into a tight hug.

“Um.”

“I need to talk to Tony,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

“Why?” she asks carefully.

“He was right.”

“He’s right about a lot of things, Steve. What’s he right about this time?”

“Something’s coming.”

He can fix this.

Please, God, let him fix this.


End file.
